“CAGW members are an iconoclastic bunch skeptical about politicians' promises.”- National Journal

CAGW: President Trump’s First Budget Proposal “the Most Pro-Taxpayer Plan in Decades”

For Immediate Release

Contact: Curtis Kalin 202-467-5318

March 16, 2017

(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), America’s largest taxpayer watchdog group, praised President Donald Trump’s first budget blueprint. The budget eliminates dozens of wasteful and duplicative programs that CAGW has long felt should be jettisoned. If enacted, the proposal represents the most fiscally conservative budget in recent memory.

CAGW President Tom Schatz proclaimed, “President Trump’s first budget proposal is unquestionably the most pro-taxpayer plan in decades. Cutting government waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement has proven to be the most difficult task in Washington. Every wasteful and duplicative program or agency has a constituency that will fight tooth and nail against any change in how bureaucratic business gets done. However, utilizing his private sector experience, President Trump has boldly challenged this status quo, brought private sector disruptors into his cabinet, and proposed a thoughtful and fiscally conservative budget.”

Most notably, the Trump budget proposal includes the elimination of many programs that have been identified by CAGW as wasteful for years in Prime Cuts and the Congressional Pig Book, such as the Appalachian Regional Commission, Corporation for National and Community Service, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Delta Regional Authority, Denali Commission, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Legal Services Corporation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. These programs have also been identified as wasteful by the Government Accountability Office and agency Inspectors General.

“This budget pushes back on the toxic Washington conventional wisdom that if the federal government does not fund it, regulate it, or control it, nothing will ever be accomplished. Countless federal programs are duplicative, fragmented, and outside of the purview of the federal government. States, cities, local officials, and the private sector can better manage and fund these priorities, and the Trump budget rightly returns those principles to Washington for the first time since the early 1980s,” concluded Schatz.

CAGW is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.